This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present disclosure, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
Advances in the petroleum industry have allowed access to oil and gas drilling locations and reservoirs that were previously inaccessible due to technological limitations. For example, technological advances have allowed drilling of offshore wells at increasing water depths and in increasingly harsh environments, permitting oil and gas resource owners to successfully drill for otherwise inaccessible energy resources. However, as wells are drilled at increasing depths, additional components may be utilized to, for example, control and or maintain pressure at the wellbore (e.g., the hole that forms the well) and/or to prevent or direct the flow of fluids into and out of the wellbore. One component that may be utilized to accomplish this control and/or direction of fluids into and out of the wellbore is a blowout preventer (BOP).
The BOP may include, for example, one or more annular BOPs and/or one or more ram BOPs. The ram BOPs may operate to seal a wellbore by, for example, fully covering the wellbore or by sealing a bore area around a drill pipe extending into the wellbore. The ram BOPs may include shear rams that operate to shear through drill pipe to, for example, regain pressure control over a wellbore. However, drill pipe typically includes tool joint sections that may be enlarged and threaded ends of joints of the drill pipe that are used to interconnect two drill pipes. The tool joints may be made of material of a higher strength than the that of the remainder of the drill pipe. Accordingly, damage to the shear rams may be encountered if the shear rams are activated when a tool joint tube (or other component) is present in a shear ram cavity. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide techniques to monitor and control one or more portions of a BOP stack to alleviate potential issues arising from the operation of one or more rams of a BOP.